Wednesday, October 30, 2013

The idea of progress by Zakia EL Moussaoui

I'm going to talk about the idea of progress and I am going to begin by defining what the progress means. It is a positive evolution, it is the act of improving, of perfecting. We have to study many documents which are in relation with this notion. To illustrate this, I selected three of them which I am going to present to you.

In the first place I selected the document « Free at last ». This document relates a social progress because in this text the narrator changes his habits and becomes a better man. This text talks about the offenders who try to change and stop doing the bad things they used to do. The scene takes place in a correctional institution in Bostral where people can practice sports. The goal of this text is to show that these people can change if they really want it. It's a good therapy for young offenders because that allows them to escape and think about nothing except sports. We can say that , this has a good impact because this system allows these people to get on the straight and narrow path.

The second document is the video of a « hero » who is William Kamkwamba. It's a technical progress because this video talks about windmills which are built by William for his neighbours and his family. The action takes place in a poor region of Malawi. I believe it represents a revolutionary innovation because this construction allowed to help people who needed it. Morever, we can say that William is a « hero » due to the fact that without anything he was able to build what he intended to. The advantage is that this project is going to bring electricity to William's neighbours. The electricity is very important and very precious in this region because Malawi is a poor country; people live in small houses which are badly isolated and they are no electricity, no water : it's misery. Indeed, these windmills are their only hope to improve their living conditions. This video does William's praise because he built these windmills without help and wihout knowing how to speak english. This makes him a « hero ».

The last one is « Sixt-Day », a movie. It's a scientist progress because this movie talks about human cloning. People who are concerned are Adam, the scientist and the dog of Adam's daughter. The scene takes place in the shop which is called « Re-Pet ». This process allows to clone animals that are dead. This process has lots of advantages : it's as safe as real pets, it's the same dog , it will remember everything.
For example, it will remember where all the bones are buried. Also, we can genetically modify it like we want. However ,it's dangerous for Adam's daughter because the dog can bite her with his sharp teeth. Finally, the dog won't have a soul.


As you were able to notice it, these three documents are about different types of progresses which have both positives and negatives. But it is no different than the world itself which constantly evolves and progresses but not always in a positive way.

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